Days of Blood & Starlight

81 Veins Of Chance

One world on its own is a strange enough seethe of coiling, unknowable veins of intention and chance, but two? Where two worlds mingle breath through rips in the sky, the strange becomes stranger, and many things may come to pass that few imaginations could encompass. 

82 Top Three Reasons For Living

Zuzana and Mik were at Ait Benhaddou when it began. It. The thing that would never be eclipsed, that would own the third-person singular, neuter pronoun “it” forever.

Where were you the day it began?

Ait Benhaddou was the most famous kasbah in Morocco, much bigger than monster castle, though lacking the zest of monsters. It had been restored by World Heritage funds and movie money—Russell Crowe had “gladiated” here—and it was sanitized and set-dressed for tourists. Shops in the lanes, rugs draped over walls, and at the main gate, camels batting their astonishing eyelashes as they posed for photographs—for a price, of course. Everything for a price, and don’t forget to bargain.

Mik was bargaining. Zuzana was sketching in the shade while he, pretending to peruse a selection of kettles, purchased an antique silver ring that he suspected was not actually silver, and probably not antique, but indisputably a ring, which was the main thing. Not an engagement ring. He’d gotten the air-conditioning back on all right, but he wasn’t about to count that as one of his tasks, and never mind, ahem, curing Zuzana’s ennui. That was most certainly not a task. It was one of his top three reasons for living—the other two being the violin and holding Zuzana’s hand—and it was an activity he performed —participated in—with a feeling of deep gratitude to the universe.

To win her hand, though, he required a challenge. Two more challenges.

He felt a curious commitment to this whole task idea. Who got to do things like this? Monsters and angels and portals and invisibility—even if the last one was a little hard to enjoy on account of all the ouch. For that matter, how many people ever got to buy maybe-antique maybe-silver rings for their beautiful girlfriends in ancient mud cities in North Africa and eat dried dates out of a paper bag and see camel eyelashes, for god’s sake, and… hey, where are all the people going?

There was a sudden tide of rushing in the narrow lane, and hollering in Arabic or Berber or some language that was not Czech or English or German or French, and Mik watched in perplexity. The locals were hollering and rushing and then doors were swallowing them up and the lanes were empty of all but tourists: tourists blinking at each other as the dust quite literally settled, and, behind the doors, the hubbub intensified.

Mik pocketed the ring and returned to Zuzana, who was still sitting in the shade, but no longer sketching. She looked up at him, unsettled. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.” He looked around. A few families still lived within the walls here; he caught a glimpse of a bright TV screen as a door swung open and shut. It was such an anachronism: a TV in this place… and then… and then the hollering turned to screaming. Such a pitch of screaming. It seemed to mingle joy and terror.

Mik grabbed Zuzana’s hand—a top-three reason for living—and pulled her across the way to where the TV was, to see what in the hell—or in the heavens—was going on. 

83 Good-Bye

When Akiva awoke, Liraz was sleeping by his side and they were in darkness, though, of course, it is never true darkness where seraphim are. Their wings, even burning dull in exhausted sleep, cast a sly luminescence that reached to the high timbered ceiling over their heads, the sloping mud walls at their sides. It was a large space, and windowless; he couldn’t tell if it was night or day. How long had he slept?

He felt… well, invigorated was a hard word under the circumstances, it sounded full of life, and he was not that, but he was a good deal better. He pushed himself up to sit.

The first thing he saw was his brother. Hazael lay on Liraz’s other side; her body was curved toward his, and for a wild instant, hope leapt in Akiva that it was three of them again, that Karou had resurrected his brother, after all, and Hazael would sit up and start telling ridiculous stories about all he had seen and done while he was a disembodied soul. But that hope quickly went the way of most hopes: Acid bitterness devoured it, and Akiva felt like a fool. Of course, Hazael was dead, still and forever. There were beginning to be flies, and that couldn’t stand.

He woke Liraz. It was time to honor their brother.

The ceremony wasn’t much as ceremonies go, but then they never were: a soldier’s funeral, the corpse its own pyre. The official words were impersonal, so they changed them to fit Hazael.

“He was always hungry,” said Liraz, “and he fell asleep sometimes on the watch. He saved himself a thousand times from discipline with his smile.”

“He could make anyone talk to him,” said Akiva. “No secret was safe from him.”

“Except yours,” murmured Liraz, and it stung, the truth of it.

“He should have had a true life,” he said. “He would have filled it up. He would have tried everything.” He would have married, he thought. He could have had children. Akiva could almost see him—the Hazael that might have been, had the world been better.

“No one has ever laughed more truly,” said Liraz. “He made laughing seem easy.”

And laughing should be easy, Akiva thought, but it wasn’t. Look at the pair of them, black hands and splintered souls. He reached for his sister’s hand, and she took it and gripped it as tightly as a sword hilt, as if her life depended on it. It hurt, but it was a pain he could easily bear.

Liraz was altered. Layers were stripped away—all her harshness and the tough veneer that even he had scarcely seen through since they were children. Hugging her knees, with her shoulders hunched and her firelit face soft with sadness, she looked vulnerable. Young. She looked almost like a different person.

“He died defending me,” she said. “If I had gone with Jael, he would still be alive.”

“No. He would have hanged,” Akiva told her. “You would still have been taken, and he would have died in misery for failing you. He would have chosen this.”

“But if he had lived just a little longer, he could have gotten away with us.” She had been staring into the flames that consumed their brother, but she blinked away from them to fix on Akiva. “Akiva. What did you do?” She did not ask, “And why didn’t you do it in time?” but the ghost question hung there anyway.

“I don’t know,” he said, to the asked question and the unasked, and he stared into the cremation fire as it burned fast and infernal, leaving only ash for an urn they didn’t have.

What did he have in him, to have done such a thing, and why hadn’t it shown itself when he needed it most —not just in time to save Hazael’s life, but years ago, to save Madrigal’s? Had the years of devotion to sirithar honed his sympathy for magic? Or was it triggered by that sudden surge of memories of his mother?

Liraz asked, “Do you think Jael is alive?”

Akiva didn’t know what to say to that, either. He didn’t want to think about Jael, but it couldn’t very well be avoided. “He may be,” he allowed. “And if he is…”

“I hope he is.”